Windows 8.1

guitarcookie1

Make sure you've got half a day put aside before you download & install...

holnrew

I'm already running the preview version, apparently I have to roll back to 8 in order to update. :x

guitarcookie1

The only difference I can see is a start menu icon in the bottom left corner; quite how this is more useful than just hovering your mouse over the same area I don't know (not that I ever use the start menu anyway)...

bertie

guitarcookie1 said:

The only difference I can see is a start menu icon in the bottom left corner; quite how this is more useful than just hovering your mouse over the same area I don't know (not that I ever use the start menu anyway)...

thats pretty much what our desktop practice techies said too

digitalscream

guitarcookie1 said:

The only difference I can see is a start menu icon in the bottom left corner; quite how this is more useful than just hovering your mouse over the same area I don't know (not that I ever use the start menu anyway)...

Indeed. Classic example of Microsoft utterly missing the point of what people were complaining about - it wasn't the lack of a button, it was the fact that the start menu was entirely absent. Giving everyone a button to take them directly to the interface they wanted to avoid in the first place is just plain hilarious. Trolling of the highest order, in fact

dafuzz

Just had a look and it's nearly a year to the day since I last booted into Win8. Is there any real reason to upgrade from 7 at all (seriously) ? I don't game on the PC and am not fussed about the latest version of a browser I never use - any other reasons?

bertie

no,  I got a lappy last year with 8 preinstalled,  off it came and 7 went on.

The only thing 8 was meant to bring was true metro light app/streaming/cloud type  access.  "APP-V is dead with win8, they did tell us".......but it didnt/hasnt

monquixote

I'm very openminded about OS and I've used Win, Mac, Linux equally. 

I really liked Win7, but 8 is just a balls up of a huge magnitude. Using it makes me want to throw things more so even than Vista did. 

holnrew

It would be really good without the metro bollocks.

With 8.1 though you can boot to desktop, have the same background for the desktop and metro, I think the NT kernel ha been upgraded too.

PolarityMan

digitalscream said:

guitarcookie1 said:

The only difference I can see is a start menu icon in the bottom left corner; quite how this is more useful than just hovering your mouse over the same area I don't know (not that I ever use the start menu anyway)...

Indeed. Classic example of Microsoft utterly missing the point of what people were complaining about - it wasn't the lack of a button, it was the fact that the start menu was entirely absent. Giving everyone a button to take them directly to the interface they wanted to avoid in the first place is just plain hilarious. Trolling of the highest order, in fact

Not as bad as the ass-hattery around unity though.

guitarcookie1

holnrew;59259" said:

With 8.1 though you can boot to desktop

That would save me one mouse click in the mornings...

strumjoughlamps

Where they went wrong IMO is trying to gel the 2. Metro interface is one of the nicest on a tablet, of course Android and iOS are better choices for app selection but Metro is smooth as to use, and Fresh Paint with a Wacom Bamboo is lovely to use..

holnrew

You can upgrade from the preview if you don't mind losing all your programmes. Which I didn't think I did until I realised how many I had.

digitalscream

PolarityMan said:

Not as bad as the ass-hattery around unity though.

It kills me, it really does - it seems that the open source community's mantra is "whatever's best will rise to the top"...except when it comes to Canonical, at which point anything they try to innovate with is universally panned.

Personally, I quite like Unity (since they fixed the performance issues) - it does what I need, and the bits it doesn't do I can easily add with other programs. For what it's worth, it's miles better than Gnome 3 in terms of usability, and a hell of a lot more stable. It's the constant irony of Linux distros...everybody bemoans the fact that Linux isn't more widely used, but every project is so stuck in their ways that they absolutely can't accept a slightly different take on it (especially if it's popular, like Ubuntu). Same goes for Mir vs Wayland; Wayland didn't (and couldn't) fulfil Canonical's needs, so they built something else and got absolutely pilloried for not sinking all their money into a project which they couldn't use.

ESchap

 

 

 monquixote said:

I'm very openminded about OS and I've used Win, Mac, Linux equally. 

I really liked Win7, but 8 is just a balls up of a huge magnitude. Using it makes me want to throw things more so even than Vista did. 

Couldn't agree more, the daily frustration with 8 is immense.   I'm just about to upgrade to a SS primary drive and I'll be taking the opportunity to go back to Win 7.  If Microsoft persist down their apparent "one operating system fits none" approach, it'll be a Mac for me next.

PolarityMan

digitalscream said:

PolarityMan said:

Not as bad as the ass-hattery around unity though.

It kills me, it really does - it seems that the open source community's mantra is "whatever's best will rise to the top"...except when it comes to Canonical, at which point anything they try to innovate with is universally panned.

Personally, I quite like Unity (since they fixed the performance issues) - it does what I need, and the bits it doesn't do I can easily add with other programs. For what it's worth, it's miles better than Gnome 3 in terms of usability, and a hell of a lot more stable. It's the constant irony of Linux distros...everybody bemoans the fact that Linux isn't more widely used, but every project is so stuck in their ways that they absolutely can't accept a slightly different take on it (especially if it's popular, like Ubuntu). Same goes for Mir vs Wayland; Wayland didn't (and couldn't) fulfil Canonical's needs, so they built something else and got absolutely pilloried for not sinking all their money into a project which they couldn't use.

I'm currently using unity at work but the launcher's is a pile of arse...the whole thing seems quite glitchy and unstable too and for some reason they deprecated unity --reset in favour of some dconf gibberish that I end up having to google every week or so.

I was however actually referring to some even more fundemental stuff like this:

http://askubuntu.com/questions/33605/can-i-move-the-unity-launcher

I mean there are actually over a million hits on google asking this question so why not drop their dogma and give users what they want?

At least MS have evidentally backpedalled in response to their users.

paulk

Total fucking bollox of an OS. What sort of twunts design this shite?

Bidley

I used Windows 8 for the first time the other day. I don't see what all the fuss is about. Mind you, I thought the same about Vista.

monquixote

digitalscream said:

PolarityMan said:

Not as bad as the ass-hattery around unity though.

It kills me, it really does - it seems that the open source community's mantra is "whatever's best will rise to the top"...except when it comes to Canonical, at which point anything they try to innovate with is universally panned.

Personally, I quite like Unity (since they fixed the performance issues) - it does what I need, and the bits it doesn't do I can easily add with other programs. For what it's worth, it's miles better than Gnome 3 in terms of usability, and a hell of a lot more stable. It's the constant irony of Linux distros...everybody bemoans the fact that Linux isn't more widely used, but every project is so stuck in their ways that they absolutely can't accept a slightly different take on it (especially if it's popular, like Ubuntu). Same goes for Mir vs Wayland; Wayland didn't (and couldn't) fulfil Canonical's needs, so they built something else and got absolutely pilloried for not sinking all their money into a project which they couldn't use.

Unity is completely broken on my Linux dev PC at work. It's a core 2 duo 2GB RAM so not new, but not a total shitheap and it takes about 2 seconds from pressing the key to the Unity menu to appear. I had to go back to Gnome 2

Myranda

digitalscream said:

PolarityMan said:

Not as bad as the ass-hattery around unity though.

It kills me, it really does - it seems that the open source community's mantra is "whatever's best will rise to the top"...except when it comes to Canonical, at which point anything they try to innovate with is universally panned.

Personally, I quite like Unity (since they fixed the performance issues) - it does what I need, and the bits it doesn't do I can easily add with other programs. For what it's worth, it's miles better than Gnome 3 in terms of usability, and a hell of a lot more stable. It's the constant irony of Linux distros...everybody bemoans the fact that Linux isn't more widely used, but every project is so stuck in their ways that they absolutely can't accept a slightly different take on it (especially if it's popular, like Ubuntu). Same goes for Mir vs Wayland; Wayland didn't (and couldn't) fulfil Canonical's needs, so they built something else and got absolutely pilloried for not sinking all their money into a project which they couldn't use.

If you don't like it make you're own... why are you doing exactly what we told you Cononical? You Bastards! You should support the community project you don't like, because community!

I can see why Stallman might disagree with the Unity Launcher thing contacting the internet and sending your search info to companies like Amazon. But that's a choice. X is not up to the job... Waland pipes up ans Canonical doesn't like it so does its own... this is a good thing, but the community seems largely incapable of accepting Canonical

monquixote

To be honest they aren't entirely blameless. They don't contribute a huge amount back to the kernel and Debian considering the size of company.